Ice swimming is an eventually nice experience if you have a sauna nearby.
If you like that kind of thing, try a cryotherapy chamber too.
The one I tried was a step-in kind of room/chamber and went down to -110 Celsius. Clothing: swimming trunks (with extremities protected by woolen socks, gloves and a skiing cap). One just stands in the chamber, without touching the metal walls for obvious reasons. Blinking often is advisable to avoid freezing the eyeballs (or so they said).
There are three chambers with decreasing temperature, one passes through these somewhat rapidly to acclimatize.
The time in the coldest chamber was 3 minutes. Before the first minute was up, I thought I was going to die there. I calmed down and just stood there blinking as if sending morse code with my eyelids, listening to the eery sounds the walls made.
I felt time dilation. It felt forever between the minutes which were spoken by the operator through the internal speaker.
Later, when taking a short swim, a swimming pool with the usually cold water felt very warm but made me start shivering eventually. I slept very well that night.
The experience felt overall very primal somehow, on many levels. I can't quite put those feelings to words.
This is the first time I hear about cryotherapy. Wikipedia says that it has not been well studied. That does sound like a unique experience, I'd like to try.
Why were you recommended this therapy? How long does the feeling of relief last?
This was at Haikko Manor in Finland, years ago. I just happened to visit a spa which had such a possibility.
It was not for medical purposes for me, but nevertheless there was a very relaxed feeling (like that from ice swimming), which lasted for many hours afterwards.
Well, it did feel "colder" than a cold winter day of, say, -25 C and wind outside, but I don't recall it hurting as such.
Then again, I didn't do deep breathing. I'd guess diaphragmatic breathing would've probably hurt in some way.
Overall the impression was a kind an inverse sauna if you know what I mean. In my experience taking deep breaths at the top bench of a dry and hot sauna stings, so the breathing naturally adapts to this.
If you like that kind of thing, try a cryotherapy chamber too.
The one I tried was a step-in kind of room/chamber and went down to -110 Celsius. Clothing: swimming trunks (with extremities protected by woolen socks, gloves and a skiing cap). One just stands in the chamber, without touching the metal walls for obvious reasons. Blinking often is advisable to avoid freezing the eyeballs (or so they said).
There are three chambers with decreasing temperature, one passes through these somewhat rapidly to acclimatize.
The time in the coldest chamber was 3 minutes. Before the first minute was up, I thought I was going to die there. I calmed down and just stood there blinking as if sending morse code with my eyelids, listening to the eery sounds the walls made.
I felt time dilation. It felt forever between the minutes which were spoken by the operator through the internal speaker.
Later, when taking a short swim, a swimming pool with the usually cold water felt very warm but made me start shivering eventually. I slept very well that night.
The experience felt overall very primal somehow, on many levels. I can't quite put those feelings to words.